Could getting more vitamin E in your diet cut your cancer risk? The research is starting to mount that vitamin E might protect against several different types of cancer, including those of the lung, prostate, and bladder. For the first time a study has compared different types of vitamin E, and it adds to the growing evidence that the alpha-tocopherol form is most effective, potentially cutting lung cancer risk by as much as half.

Researchers have focused on vitamin E for potential cancer prevention because it is a powerful antioxidant. It thwarts the efforts of unstable molecules in the body called free radicals that can otherwise damage cells and turn them cancerous. Vitamin E is actually not one nutrient, but a group of substances. Studies up to now have focused on what is believed to be the most potent form of the vitamin-alpha-tocopherol but researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas wanted to find out whether other forms of the vitamin might also have some potential for preventing lung cancer.

The study included 1,088 patients with lung cancer, and 1,414 healthy patients who served as comparisons. Participants in the two groups were around the same age and had the same smoking history.

Researchers collected information on the participants' diets, and based on what they ate, isolated out different tocopherols. For example, gamma- tocopherol is found in foods like vegetable oils, peanuts, and pecans. Sunflower seeds and fortified cereals are major sources of alpha-tocopherol.

When the researchers analyzed the different dietary intakes of the various forms of viamin E, they found that people with a lot of alpha-tocopherol in their diet had a 34% to 53% lower lung cancer risk. "Our study agrees with the evidence showing that low levels of both dietary and serum (blood) levels of alpha- tocopherol may predispose [people] to lung cancer risk," says lead author Somdat Mahabir, MPH, PhD, assistant professor in the department of Epidemiology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The other forms of vitamin E didn't seem to independently affect lung cancer risk, Dr. Mahabir and his colleagues reported in the September 1, 2008 issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

The effects of alpha-tocopherol were statistically similar in never, former, and current smokers, but the risk reduction was more pronounced in current smokers and those people who had smoked for a longer period of time.

Several types of foods-particularly peanut butter and salad dressing-supplied a big percentage of the alpha-tocopherol in the participants' diet. But rather than focusing on individual foods, Dr. Mahabir recommends including all forms of vitamin E as part of an overall healthy diet. "Different forms of vitamin E (other tocopherols) are required for different biological functions, and therefore getting adequate vitamin E from the diet is recommended," he says.

He doesn't advise taking vitamin E supplements, though. There's no evidence that supplements protect against lung cancer, and in high doses, vitamin E has been linked to an increased risk of bleeding and death.

Now that researchers have found evidence that vitamin E protects against cancer, they need to learn how exactly the nutrient works in the body to reduce cancer risk, Dr. Mahabir says. Ideally, future research would look at the levels of the different tocopherols in participants' blood to get a more precise idea of how much they are getting, and then follow those people for several years to see which of them go on to develop lung cancer. "This will provide an opportunity to prospectively assess how blood concentrations of different forms of vitamin E affect cancer risk," Dr. Mahabir says.

If you are interested in using diet or natural products to prevent or manage cancer, talk to your licensed health practitioner.

Source:

Mahabir S, Schendel K, Dong YQ, Barrera SL, Spitz MR, Forman MR. Dietary alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocopherols in lung cancer risk. Int J Cancer. 2008;123:1173-1180.

You've heard time and again how important it is to eat a healthy, balanced diet. Now researchers are discovering even more reasons why diet is so important. Certain dietary compounds may slow the spread of cancer and increase the effectiveness of current cancer treatments, potentially saving lives.

"What we eat can determine our fate," explains Daniel Sliva, PhD, senior investigator and director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at Methodist Research Institute, and the Indiana University School of Medicine. "There are a lot of different natural products in food…that are important for cancer prevention."

Dr. Sliva singled out three products-green tea, soy, and a type of mushroom-for a report published in the June issue of Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry. In his lab, he has investigated how these foods interfere with cancer cells' ability to multiply and spread. "There are specific molecules which are apparently active in cancer cells, and these molecules are regulating signaling in cells," he says. Signaling enables the cancer cells to grow uncontrolled and spread, and speeds the production of blood vessels that feed the cancer cells (called angiogenesis). "We can actually inhibit these signaling pathways or some enzymes that are responsible for over-activation of these pathways."

The major active compound in green tea, EGCG, affects various cancer signaling pathways, and may help reduce the invasiveness of breast, pancreatic, colon, and other types of cancer cells. What's more, EGCG has anti-inflammatory properties. Chronic inflammation has been implicated in cancer development, Dr. Sliva says.

For evidence of soy's cancer fighting ability, researchers say look to the East. Asian countries with a high-soy diet tend to have a low incidence of cancer. The main anti-cancer component in soy is genistein, which appears to slow the spread of a number of cancers, including breast, prostate, and lung cancers. One caveat is that some research has found soy might actually contribute to a higher risk of breast cancer in some women, so soy supplements should be used with caution, Dr. Sliva says.

The last natural compound in the trio Dr. Sliva studied is the Asian medicinal mushroom, Ganoderma lucidum, which has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of ailments. Its active components are polysaccharides, which stimulate the immune system, and triterpenes, which help suppress the spread of cancer cells. Researchers are investigating the mushroom's potential for preventing and treating breast, prostate, bladder, and other types of cancers.

These nutrients might also prove helpful in combination with traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. For example, adding genistein to chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin or docetaxel in the lab inhibited cancer cell growth and led to the death of more cancer cells than the chemotherapy drugs alone. Incorporating these natural compounds might cut down on some of the severe side effects that normally arise with cancer treatment. "The majority of treatments for cancer use doses that are close to toxic. We are trying to cure cancer, but may harm the patients," explains Dr. Sliva. "If you can use the natural products in combination with chemotherapy, you can lower the doses of chemotherapy and reduce side effects."

One day, soy, green tea, and other natural compounds might help researchers identify new cancer targets, Dr. Sliva says. They could also aid in the development of cancer therapies that are more effective and have fewer side effects than drugs currently available. For now, making these nutrients part of an overall healthy diet could prove a powerful cancer-prevention tool.

If you are interested in using natural products like green tea, soy, or mushroom to prevent or manage cancer, talk to your licensed health practitioner.

Source:

Sliva D. Suppression of cancer invasiveness by dietary compounds. Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry. 2008;8:677-688.

Dichloroacetate (DCA), a drug that has been used for many years in patients with metabolic disorders, has recently been gaining attention for its cancer-fighting capabilities. Studies in the lab have already shown its potential against lung, breast and glioblastoma cancer cells. Now a new study in the journal Gynecologic Oncology finds that DCA might also be a promising therapy for endometrial cancer.

Endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the uterus, is often treated with chemotherapy. But chemo can cause severe side effects because it kills healthy cells along with cancerous ones.

To learn what effect DCA might have on endometrial cancer, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston grew several different endometrial cancer cell lines in a culture along with different doses of DCA. The higher the dose, the greater the effect DCA had on the cancer cells. Doses of between 5 mM and 10 mM appeared to be very effective against endometrial cancer.

DCA inhibits endometrial and other types of cancer cells in a unique way - by capitalizing on their unusual method of energy production. Unlike normal cells, which produce their energy in specialized units of the cell called mitochondria, cancer cells make energy through an inefficient cell-wide process called aerobic glycolysis. DCA forces the energy production into the mitochondria of the cancer cell, bringing the process back to normal. In doing so, DCA activates the cell's process of programmed death, called apoptosis.

The researchers confirmed that DCA reduced the viability of endometrial cancer cells by triggering apoptosis, and by reducing the amount of a protein that would normally protect cancer cells from death. While it sped the destruction of cancer cells, DCA had no effect on healthy cells, which could mean fewer or no toxic side effects if DCA is ultimately used in human treatment.

The downside is that the most highly invasive endometrial cancer cells didn't respond to DCA in the study, a finding that underscores the tenacity of the disease. "Cancer cells are the ultimate survivors. They often have altered traits in order to out-survive and out- proliferate normal cells," explains Jason Wong, senior research laboratory manager at the Immaculata De Vivo Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

DCA does seem very promising for low to moderately invasive endometrial cancer cells, though. "Based on experiments performed thus far on the benchtop and in mouse models, we believe DCA is a very promising cancer therapeutic agent," Wong says. "However, it is important to curb our enthusiasm until clinical trials in humans are complete. Most therapeutic agents that have shown promise in animal models have often failed to show adequate safety and efficacy in humans."

Currently, a Phase I clinical trial is underway at the University of Alberta in Canada to investigate a safe dose for humans. Future research will also look at the potential benefit of DCA on other types of cancers, including ovarian cancer, and try to determine why some cancer cells seem to be more resistant to the drug than others, Wong says.

Source:

Wong JYY, Huggins GS, Debidda M, Munshi NC, De Vivo I. Dichloroacetate induces apoptosis in endometrial cancer cells. Gynecologic Oncology. 2008. doi:10.1016/j.ygyno.2008.01.038.

Mesothelioma is a cancer directly linked to asbestos exposure. Now researchers are discovering that the extent of that exposure can significantly affect how long a patient survives, and they're finding that some people may be more susceptible to the effects of asbestos than others.

Of all the cancers, mesothelioma is among the most deadly-most patients survive for less than one year. Researchers have been trying to prolong patients' lives, in part by learning more about the disease and how it progresses. Because the vast majority of mesothelioma cases can be attributed to asbestos exposure, knowing how that exposure contributes to disease progression is an important component of research.

"One crucial part of trying to advance our understanding of a serious disease like mesothelioma is discovering the factors that contribute to a poorer outcome," explains Karl Kelsey, MD, professor of Community Health and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University. Dr. Kelsey and his colleagues set out to determine how asbestos exposure might affect patient survival. "Since it is very difficult to assess asbestos exposure, the question that we were able to evaluate had never really been asked prior to our work."

The researchers asked 128 patients with mesothelioma about their history of asbestos exposure. Then they looked at the number of asbestos particles in samples removed from the patients' lungs and tumors during surgery.

Not surprisingly, patients with the highest amount of asbestos fibers in their lungs faced the greatest risk of death-nearly five times higher than those with a moderate amount of asbestos fibers. What was surprising was that patients with a low number of asbestos fibers also had a significantly higher risk of death-three times that of people with a moderate number of fibers.

This unusual finding suggests that certain people may be more susceptible to the effects of asbestos than others, and as a result may develop the disease after less exposure. "Although the mechanism for the unusual dose-response we observe is unclear, patients with a higher susceptibility to asbestos may suffer from a more aggressive form of disease that more closely resembles disease in patients with the highest exposure," Dr. Kelsey says. More susceptible people may also develop mesothelioma at a younger age, he says.

The poorest outcome in the study was among men, who had the highest levels of asbestos fibers in their lungs, Dr. Kelsey and his colleagues reported in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. This finding makes sense, considering that men have traditionally worked in industries with high asbestos exposure. Men in the study also faced worse odds of surviving the disease than women.

Currently doctors have no way of determining which people might be more susceptible to asbestos, although Dr. Kelsey's lab is trying to discover the genes responsible for increased susceptibility.

For now, understanding the relationship between asbestos exposure and survival can provide doctors with an important clue to help treat their mesothelioma patients. "Our study suggests that considerable asbestos exposure is associated with a more aggressive disease," Dr. Kelsey says. "Highly exposed people with this disease may need more aggressive therapy."

Source:

Christensen BC, Godleski JJ, Roelofs CR, Longacker JL, Bueno R, Sugarbaker DJ, Marsit CJ, Nelson HH, Kelsey KT. Asbestos burden predicts survival in pleural mesothelioma. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2008;116:723-726.

Cancer Foundations

Mesothelioma Research Foundation of America - The mission of the Mesothelioma Research Foundation of America is to fund research that will lead to the quickest cure for mesothelioma. Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs caused by asbestos exposure, has very few treatment options at this time. Since the year 2001, the foundation has funded the opening of the Mesothelioma Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Parkash Gill at the USC/Norris who is currently investigating Veglin, an anti-angiogenesis agent. A Phase I study of Veglin has demonstrated some success in patients suffering from lymphoma, sarcoma, and colon and lung cancers. Phase II studies are on-going with the hope they will demonstrate continued clinical efficacy in mesothelioma and other cancers. For more information about the Phase II study of Veglin you may contact Dr. Gill through the Mesothelioma Research Foundation of America. 1-800-909-Meso (6376) http://www.mesorfa.org

Immune Boosting Products

Get Healthy Again.com - This company provides a variety of immune boosting nutritional supplements designed to enhance the immune system. http://www.health-reports.com/cancer- conquest.html

Legal Services

Brain Cancer Misdiagnosis Information Center - Brain Cancer Misdiagnosis Information Center provides information on the frequency of brain cancer misdiagnosis, how you can find out if you have been misdiagnosed, and what you can do about it. The Center is run by the law firm of Webb, Scarmozzino & Gunter. http://www.brai ncancerlaw.com

Goldberg, Persky & White, P.C. - This law firm (and its predecessor law firms) has been a pioneer in asbestos litigation in the United States. The attorneys of Goldberg, Persky & White, P.C. (GPW) have been involved in asbestos and mesothelioma lawsuits since 1978. Their experienced mesothelioma lawyers participated in the gathering of evidence, such as the testimony of corporate executives and doctors, and the accumulation of corporate documents, that helped create the basis for successfully suing the asbestos industry. GPW has represented thousands of mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis victims. Because of their involvement in asbestos litigation from the beginning, GPW has a clear understanding of what is required to succeed. In addition to outstanding trial experience, GPW is backed by a large arsenal of corporate documents, depositions, and medical articles with which to vigorously prosecute your asbestos case. http://www.gpwlaw. com/cm

Paul & Hanley LLP - Paul & Hanley LLP has built its reputation on mesothelioma-asbestos litigation-representing individuals diagnosed with mesothelioma or serious asbestos-related diseases. They have an outstanding track record of success and have garnered many of the most significant California verdicts. Their lawyers are known for their honesty, integrity and compassion. They handle a select number of cases at a time and represent workers and families with the extra special attention required for the best possible outcome in each case. They understand your case is unique, so they take the time to get to know you and your family. Contact them today for a free and confidential consultation. They will discuss your specific case and give you honest answers to your important questions. Their toll free telephone number is
1-800- 281-9804. They look forward to helping you. http://www.Paul&Hanley LLP.com

Nutritional Support

Haelan Products offers Haelan 951, an international award-winning, super nutritious, fermented soybean protein beverage. Clinical research and numerous reports from doctors and cancer patients have demonstrated that Haelan 951 helps protect cancer patients from the toxic side-effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In addition, one study found that the soy isoflavone genistein (which is found in Haelan 951) produced greater apoptosis with both chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Apoptosis means "programmed cell death" and it is a goal of most orthodox cancer therapies. Because Haelan 951 is a nutritional supplement, not a cancer treatment, it was used in this study to offset the toxicity of the treatments, not as a cancer therapy. http://www.haelan9 51.com